Your Right to Know

The advice Gov. John Kasich says he gives to freshman lawmakers goes something like this: Don’t run for office just to be in office.

“Go and do something,” Kasich said during his last public speech this year. “Stick your neck out. Bring change; that’s what people remember you for.”

There is perhaps no better way to characterize Kasich’s first three years as Ohio’s 69th governor.

The state is unquestionably different; the changes wrought by Kasich are unarguably bold.

Taxes on income, banks and small businesses are lower. So is the amount of money the state sends to local governments.

JobsOhio exists and takes the lead in attracting investment and jobs to the state. It is a private agency, funded by a lease of the state’s liquor franchise.

Other major changes: Medicaid expansion, funding cuts to nursing homes, clearer pathways to a job for nonviolent felons. Also, more charter schools and vouchers and tougher standards for public schools.

But leaders such as Kasich who move that fast, like a NASCAR driver, sometimes crash. That happened with Senate Bill 5, the proposal to undo collective bargaining for public workers, which voters overwhelmingly overturned in November 2011.

“I do believe Senate Bill 5 and the bull-in-a-china-shop, take-no-prisoners agenda that the governor has engaged in, I think it reflects in Senate Bill 5 and other issues” Kasich pursued, said Jay McDonald, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police.

The Republican governor has a vast agenda of change that at times irks not only Democrats but also members of his own party. Kasich and his supporters say these changes were made to move the state forward, while Ohio Democrats say they have had a tremendously negative impact on the state.

These arguments over policy — particularly as they relate to the economy, which showed real signs of recovery earlier in Kasich’s term but has slowed recently — will be at the center of the debate when Kasich seeks re-election next year, likely against Democrat Ed FitzGerald.

The irony is that all of the newness Kasich has introduced to state government is the result of his changing very little when it comes to the “who” and “how” of his decision-making.

“It’s too soon to be writing history, but my suspicion is, this governor will be the biggest change agent that we have seen since Jim Rhodes,” state Rep. Ron Amstutz, a Wooster Republican, said, referring to Ohio’s longest-tenured governor, who served from 1963 to ’71 and ’75 to ’83.

Most of the policies that have come out of Kasich’s office started with him, usually after he asked a question.

A former state legislator and then a U.S. congressman for 18 years, Kasich went on to host a TV show on Fox News and was a managing director for now-defunct Lehman Brothers. He has spent his career identifying problems and seeking solutions, aides say.

As governor, and before that as a candidate in 2010 for the job he holds, Kasich formulates state policy by asking his closest advisers why a certain problem exists and what can be done to solve it.

Whom he asks largely has gone unchanged since the early days of his candidacy. They’re called his “kitchen cabinet,” and they include policy chiefs Wayne Struble and Ben Kanzeg, who have histories with Kasich stretching back to his days in Congress, and senior adviser Jai Chabria, who has been his closest aide for years in both the private and public sectors.

Budget director Tim Keen, chief of staff Beth Hansen, Medicaid expert Greg Moody and communication director Scott Milburn were all brought on board during Kasich’s first gubernatorial campaign and are among that group. Local real-estate attorney and longtime friend Ron Hartman also advises Kasich.

“The kitchen cabinet is not necessarily a set of people, but a process,” Milburn said. “It’s a specific way he goes about pressure-checking notions of priorities. Is this the right problem to be focused on? Are these the right ways to go about it?”

Kasich’s policy questions go first to his kitchen cabinet and to the appropriate agency director, and from there the real meat grinding begins. When a draft proposal is ready, it goes back to the kitchen cabinet and Kasich for more questions and answers. Outsiders — read: lawmakers — are often kept at arm’s length, especially minority Democrats, who are rarely consulted.

“I wish there was a little healthier respect for the legislative process,” said Rep. Jay Hottinger, a Newark Republican. “I wish there was a little more listening. And the other thing is, maybe style and style points. When you swing for a home run, what happens in baseball, when you swing for the home run and don’t hit it, you strike out. I am a small-ball player. ... Sometimes you have to take things from more of a piecemeal approach.”

Republicans in the House fought Kasich all year on Medicaid expansion, stripping it from the budget in March, and the governor won approval to spend $2.56 billion in federal money on expansion in October only by going to a seven-member, bipartisan spending oversight panel.

The GOP-controlled legislature has said no twice to Kasich’s proposed fracking tax, and only now are some Republican lawmakers warming to a new tax on shale drillers that is lower than what Kasich proposed.

Republicans also rejected Kasich’s proposed expansion of the state’s sales-tax base to pay for income-tax cuts in the budget, and eventually got the governor to agree to a slight increase in the sales tax and rollbacks on some property-tax breaks to fund a three-year, $2.7 billion overall tax reduction.

Kanzeg said that in some cases “the right person not being in the room at the right time” from outside the administration has stalled some policy initiatives. But aides also say a shifting sense of urgency in the legislature has played a role.

When Kasich came into office, there was a looming budget deficit that at one time was nearly $8 billion. So in 2011, proposals to cut the local government fund in half and make extensive Medicaid reforms were finalized in relative lockstep with GOP lawmakers who, like Kasich, did not want to fill the hole with a state tax increase. (And, in fact, they cut taxes through the legislature’s proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which Kasich embraced.)

Now that the state’s finances are stable — the rainy-day fund hit $1.48 billion last summer — Kasich’s team believes there has been more of a reluctance from legislative partners to tackle big issues.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting to fix pressing problems just when it’s convenient,” said Matt Carle, now Kasich’s campaign manager who previously served as his legislative director.

This year, Kasich traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, where he came down with a serious head cold. One of the two aides who traveled with him wound up in the hospital from exhaustion.

And yet, Kasich’s perpetual sense of urgency was illustrated when, immediately upon his return, he and aides unveiled proposals for Medicaid expansion, school funding and tax reform as part of the budget in a span of about 10 days.

“There is no question the guy has done some significant stuff,” said Zach Schiller, policy expert for the liberal-leaning Policy Matters Ohio. “Some of it has been to the benefit of Ohio, (but) I don’t think smaller government and lower taxes are the answers to Ohio’s problems.”

But some see the changes leading to a better outcome for the state.

“Ohio is much better off today than it was under the previous administration. A majority of the credit should be awarded to Kasich,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, whom Kasich appointed to the State Medical Board. “Whether you agree with these decisions or not, at least decisions are being made. Change has occurred in Ohio due to Kasich’s leadership and refusal to accept the status quo.”